Philanthrocapitalism in Public Education, Blockchain Cradle-to-Career Surveillance, and Other Fresh New Horrors from the First Ever Tuesday Tech Talk

by Marie K. Heath

We hosted our first every Tuesday Tech Talk last week! Like all of our endeavors so far (book clubs, the annual conference, in person meet ups, etc.), we hoped that making space for community would lead to powerful questions and thoughtful actions in critical technology education. Beyond that, we honestly didn’t know what to expect. We should have known by now that we’d be blown away by the ideas, actions, and questions that the Civics of Technology community shared.

Much of our open-ended conversation centered around rising concerns about private technology companies in the sphere of public education. Dr. Roxana Marachi shared her work on data justice in education, particularly through the lenses of surveillance capitalism, philanthrocapitalsm, cradle-to-career data tracking, and race. Cradle-to-career data tracking and philanthrocapitalism were brand new terms for me, and opened up my thinking to a host of harms to public education that I hadn’t deeply considered. 

For example, I had no idea that block chain technology is being used to track student data through cradle-to-career apps, nor did I understand that those apps have the potential to link to social service technologies. In other words, under the guise of “encouraging” mothers to bring children to well child checkups or purchase nutritious food for children, apps surveil mothers and children. The application notifies social services and schools if mothers miss an appointment. The children get pinged for tracking, intervention, and it could even lead to having their services throttled. Of course this quantification of behavior and the policing of the family ends up harming the most vulnerable all while collecting a treasure trove of private data. You can watch Dr. Mariachi share more in her talk, Tokenizing Toddlers: Cradle-to-Career Behavioral Tracking on Blockchain, Web3, and the “Internet of Education.” 

Dr. Mariachi also shared her curated list of resources on data justice, Resources to Learn about AI, BigData, Blockchain, Algorithmic Harms, and Data Justice, which is brimming with thoughtful journalistic and peer reviewed pieces on these topics, as well as web sources and inks to action groups. If you are looking for a way in to this work, planning to develop a syllabus for critical technology education, or wanting to dig more deeply into a topic, Dr. Mariachi has you covered.

We ended the hour-long gathering full of ideas for new learning and new action. In particular we’re brainstorming ways to collectively learn more and where we can best support the work of activists in these spaces. 

I left the hour chat feeling inspired by the good company and growing community I’m finding through Civics of Technology. I have so much more to learn, and can’t wait till our next chat on Tuesday, March 7th at 8pm EST! Register on our Events page to join us next time.